Wednesday, January 12, 2011 The first blow came from behind, a sledgehammer punch to the kidney. She hit the ground hard, the tender flesh of her cheek connecting with gravel. Grazing, scraping, tearing. She tried to cry out. Vomited instead. Get up, get up. Run. Now. For a brief moment, she managed to rise up onto her elbows, the meteor shower clearing from her vision. She half-turned, but the next blow caught her on her left side, a fiery explosion within her as ribs caved. Steel-toed boot? Baseball bat? A puddle beneath her. Pee? Blood? Didn’t matter. Wet was bad. “Harp … no—” Strong hands yanked her jacket over her head, flipped her over. Blind panic. Muffled scream. Fists to face. The cracking of bone. More punches, from every direction, impossible to stop. She couldn’t breathe. “Har—” She was drowning in her own vomit, her insides white-hot with pain. The next kick log-rolled her onto one side, and the contents of her mouth spewed out. She took in a single, greedy gulp of air, one moment before the crazy bastard stomped down hard on her shoulder.

***

SERGEANT ZYGMUNT TAKACS raked a hand through his buzz cut and paced the speckled tiles in the hospital corridor. He had already called home to make sure his daughter had obeyed her curfew; his wife, Ilona, her voice thick with sleep, reminded him that no cop’s partner appreciated being phoned after midnight. If you’re not bleeding or dying, whatever you have to tell me will keep until morning. Gone were the days when they could talk all night, when she would wait for his calls just to hear his voice. “See you when I see you,” he muttered and returned the phone to his pocket. At 4:00 a.m. he finally got the go-ahead to enter Susan Merrick’s room. “Five minutes,” the doctor cautioned, “and that doesn’t mean you can stretch it to ten. The surgery went well, but one look will tell you she’s in no shape for conversation.” Ziggy approached the bed quietly. Beneath a flannelette sheet, Susan Merrick rested, drifting in and out of a painkiller stupor. Her body, minus a spleen, was a purple mass of lumps and bumps. A patch of her right cheek was beefsteak. Her broken wrist, badly swollen, was immobilized by a splint, her arm held in place by a sling. Her fractured jaw was wired shut. One blackened eyelid fluttered open and a filmy eye focused on Ziggy, rolled upward then fixed on him again. “Mrs. Merrick,” he said gently, “I’m Sergeant Takacs. I’ll keep this short. Who did this to you?” “Huh. Huh. Huh.” Her eye rolled. “Husband?” He took hold of her good hand. “How be you give me one squeeze for a yes. Two for a no.” One squeeze. Barely there. “We’ll get him,” he told her softly. “You just get some sleep.” Stronger grip now. “A-ah. Ab.” Dry cracked lips closing. “Ab.” A wide rictus. “Eee.” “Abby? Is that what you said?” A squeeze. “You have a daughter?” Squeeze. “How old?” He waited. Counted the squeezes. Seven. “Is she at home?” Squeeze. “We’ll get her. We’ll keep her safe.” Susan Merrick’s eye had already closed.

3

The morning after Abby Merrick’s disappearance, nature wrought a full-blown tantrum along the Oregon coast. Cypress Village awoke to pelting rain and eighty-mile-an-hour gusts that pounded the headlands. Monstrous white rollers slammed against the shore, rewarding the surge of storm watchers who filled the seaside inns with a spectacular show. American flags were taken down, replaced by the two red Coast Guard flags, a signal meaning: Gale Warning! Rows of trees snapped like wishbones and toppled onto power lines, knocking out service to thirty thousand homes and businesses. Schools closed. In nearby Tillamook, trailer parks were evacuated. Sections along U.S. Route 101 were impassable because of downed trees and flooding waters. Coasties, used to a few good shingle shakers during storm season, were staying battened down. The few who ventured out into the teeth of the storm lined up at gas stations to fill their red cans, trying to power up generators and chainsaws to clear their properties. Telephone service was disrupted throughout the area. Citizens in Astoria, Seaside and Warrenton were unable to make long-distance calls. Cypress Village was without 911 service. Utility crews, trying to cut their way through fallen timber and downed transmission poles, were recalled. The Coast Guard, having lost communication with its command center, did not send out its cutter. The region’s newspaper, the Clatsop County Examiner, didn’t have power to run its press and for the first time, missed getting out its morning edition. News of Abby Merrick’s disappearance was swallowed up by the storm.

***

Day Three

SHE WAS DRAWING on a pad of paper with a bright red crayon. She didn’t look up, didn’t smile. Today’s lesson was on the single chalkboard, the printing modeled after the beautifully formed, rounded letters that strung across a cardboard choo-choo train alphabet. A cheery touch to an otherwise spartan space. Board games and jigsaw puzzles purchased from a church rummage sale two counties over were stacked on a shelf by the wall. Dog-eared books and used texts filled a box that once held Australian Chardonnay. Another box contained a set of flash cards, some puppets and Play-Doh, but so far, she hadn’t displayed much interest in any of it. She would have to be taught not to be so fussy. Plenty of children in poor countries would be grateful to be in school. It wasn’t much of a classroom. Subterranean, for one thing. And devoid of the raucous clamor and music and gleeful giggles that permeated most schools. This classroom held only one student. She was tied to a chair. And the chair was bolted to the floor.

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